AMD Radeon R9 and R7 Graphics Unleashed

Meet the New Radeon R9 and R7 Series

Expecting a Radeon 8000 series of graphics cards? Well, if you’ve missed our update from last month, AMD has decided to skip the conventional four-digit naming scheme to something you might be familiar when browsing AMD APU processor models where there are two descriptors to help carve out the product lineup. AMD seems to think that the new Radeon R9 and R7 graphics cards pack enough firepower and new features to warrant a differentiation noteworthy of the change it hopes to bring for the gaming scene and the name change was part of the plan to keep things fresh.

We’ll get to the details of what makes the new graphics cards tick and outshine its predecessors, but before that, it’s time to get a quick overview of the new series that will soon be available this month. Though the AMD Radeon R9 series is targeted at enthusiasts and the R7 is tailored for mainstream gamers, if AMD keeps its promise, consumers should be able to get stocks of both varieties in the channel through staggered introduction throughout this month in October. 

Take note that at the time of publication, the top of the line Radeon R9 SKU is still under embargo till a later date. That aside, here's a broad overview of the various new Radeon GPU SKUs and how their basic configuration differs:-

Product Positioning of the new Radeon Series

To sum up all of the new offering neatly, the new Radeon R9 270X is designed for the best gaming quality at 1080p resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels), while the R9 280X is targeted at gamers using existing large screen monitors and high resolutions like 2560 x 1440 pixels, and the R9 290 series is built for individuals who’ll settle nothing less than gaming in 4K resolution with the very best monitors available in the market. The entire R7 series is made for price-conscious upgraders moving from integrated graphics or replacing older graphics hardware but welcome the modern features of the new GPUs. 

What you should really be aware is that the brand new "Hawaii" GPU core is only featured on the Radeon R9 290 series. For the Radeon R9 280 series and lower, you'll notice that AMD has rehashed their existing GPU cores from the Southern Island GPUs. An exception is for the Radeon R7 260X that will feature a new ASIC to support a new hardware feature - AMD TrueAudio Technology. We cover more about this feature on the next page, but as for the R7 260X GPU core, it's still using the same GCN architecture from the Radeon HD 7000 series.

When we asked AMD of the reasons behind the new naming scheme, they pin it squarely on their new marketing and initiatives for the GPU division as a whole and thus a new brand name to reflect this change. Primarily, AMD is working more with game developers and making waves in the gaming industry with their new Mantle API initiative. While that bodes well with AMD's directions, this will undoubtedly cause some confusion with end-users who expect a radical change when they purchase newly branded products and not variations of existing products. Only time will tell how this might pan out.

At the Core of Things - An Updated GCN Architecture

Last generation’s Southern Island GPUs have made significant changes to the graphics processing architecture that debuted as the Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture. The new Hawaii-core based GPU that will be featured on the Radeon R9 290 series take it up a notch with further refinements and an updated core layout to account for even more firepower. Unfortunately, at the time of publishing this, the detailed information about the R9 290 series is still under NDA and that prevents us from sharing a lot of interesting tidbits of the new architecture.

Despite that, we’ve spent some time studying the details of the core such that we’ll present you aspects that don’t yet infringe on the NDA. For starters, the core processing unit in any of AMD’s modern GPU is a GCN compute unite (CU). This has largely remained identical to that of the GCN CU of the Southern Island GPUs (Radeon HD 7000 series), but has a few updates such as support for a Flat Addressing support that now allows the hardware to determine direct addressing, improved media processing instruction support – especially to the Maskable Quad Sum of Absolute Difference (MQSAD) that was introduced in the previous generation whose function is to allow background pixels to be ignored while helping isolate moving objects. So yes, on the whole each GCN CU still has quad 16-processing element vector units, which gives you 64 stream processors per GCU block (or per GCN CU).

What has changed is the number of GCN compute units that the entire GPU has in each of the R9 and R7 models, which brings about the differentiated number of stream processors available (as tabulated above). Supporting the graphics processing blocks is other functions like the rasterizer, render back-ends, geometry processors, L2 cache and the memory interface – all of which have been incrementally updated but the biggest change is the allocation of the number of units per shader engine block. We’ll detail this when we’ve obtained clearance, but two aspects that have been publicly acknowledged is the doubling of the render back-ends on the top tier R9 290 series (to cater to 4K resolution gaming) compared to the Radeon HD 7970 and the much higher density memory interface used on the new R9 and R7 GPUs that consume much less die space in a bandwidth per mm² dies size used.

The new R9 and R7 series of GPUs are still manufactured based on the 28nm processing node, but given all the enhancements and increased number of processing units/blocks and other other aspects, the top-end R9 290 series carries over 6 billion transistors and naturally a larger die size compared to its predecessor. Despite that, AMD assured us that the R9 290 series uses 25% less die size compared to NVIDIA’s Titan and is more efficient per mm² die size (though there’s no mention of how the performance will stack up).

While details of the Radeon R9 290 series are still under wraps, we’ve enough information to detail where the Radeon R9 280X stands, the next best in the line-up from AMD. As you can see from the tabulated comparison, the R9 280X comes up as a close contender with the Radeon 7970 GHz edition. In fact from our testing of an ASUS R9 280X OC graphics card, we found both of them performing rather similarly that the new R9 280X seems to be a direct replacement to the long running Radeon 7970 (both in price and performance).

Power to the People - A New PowerTune for 2013/2014

AMD’s PowerTune technology is the company’s version of the more popular GPU Boost used on NVIDIA’s products – even though AMD debuted this technology earlier. Essentially, AMD PowerTune that is featured on the previous generation Southern Island GPUs (Radeon HD 7000 series) analyzes the ‘active power signature’ of the card to utilize the unused thermal headroom. This is because most use-case scenarios hardly approach the graphics card’s TDP and technologies like AMD PowerTune help utilize balance power budget to push the core clock speeds and provide enthusiasts with increase performance.

After more than 1.5 years since the Radeon HD 7970 first debuted, we’re glad to know that the Radeon R9 290 parts will also feature a much more comprehensive PowerTune technology, more so because NVIDIA’s GeForce Boost 2.0 in its current generation of offerings has been available since earlier this year. As painted in AMD’s PowerTune manifesto, it aims to be the most advanced controller to-date as it will now not only factor active power consumption, but also factor in other attributes such as real-time temperature monitoring, voltage draw and even fan speed.

As shown in the block diagram above, a Digital Power Management (DPM) arbitrator checks on the card’s temperature, power consumption and voltage draw to determine how best to increase another attribute to maximize the potential of the hardware. Factoring temperature targets (default threshold set at 95 degrees Celsius) and fan noise are the newer aspects of the new PowerTune architecture to provide more control and optimization. For the longest time, we’ve been complaining about the AMD reference coolers being rather noisy when we’re in the thick of gaming. Fortunately, the ability to set fan speed to your preference helps one control the optimal acoustics of the card and also ensures there’s no drastic changes in noise levels as the card enters various stages of usage.

At the end of the day, overall performance of the Radeon R9 and R7 graphics cards are determined by the overall balance power budget available and due to the dynamic nature and the various parameters that are in control by PowerTune (and further user inputs), AMD is officially acknowledging that the R9 and R7 cards will no longer have a single advertised clock speed but they will be advertised as “Up to xxxxMHz”. This is again noticeable by the large specs table we’ve tabulated above that reflects this change of marketing.

Alas, all of this is playing catch-up as NVIDIA’s GPU Boost 2.0 and partner utilities have supported all of these in the GeForce 700 series of graphics cards from earlier this year. Nevertheless, it’s good to know AMD recognizes what needs to be done to appeal to the modern gamer. Performance numbers isn’t everything as the overall user experience is important too. Having said that, we notice that AMD hasn’t talked about any improvements to the cooler/shroud/fan used and we suspect that without the updated PowerTune, perhaps the reference cards will once again rear their ugly side of the previous generation Radeon cards. We’ll find out when and if we get hold of a reference-based Radeon R9 graphics card (at this point of time, we’re receiving a number of custom designed editions for evaluation from the usual suspects).

Designed for High Resolution Gaming (Ultra HD / 4K)

While AMD was first to support 4K resolution gaming, setting up such monitors wasn't a straightforward affair and might need Eyefinity setup to manually configure such monitors. With the new graphics card series bringing in more firepower, an improved Catalyst driver suite promises to support popular 4K resolution monitors out of the box without configuration. On that note, AMD has also proposed to the Video Electronics Standard Association (VESA) to update its standard to support for displays larger than 4K resolution, tiled display technologies and stereo 3D formats among others, which VESA accepted and updated their DisplayID standard to version 1.3.

In that sense, the new Radeon graphics cards are designed to be 4K-ready, but only the Radeon R9 290X has enough processing throughput to really deliver high performance gaming at high quality settings at such resolution. For standard non-gaming display output needs, both the old Radeon HD 7000 series and the newer Radeon R9/R7 models support 4K resolution output via HDMI at 30Hz and via DisplayPort at 60Hz (with or without the MST hub).

Most existing Ultra HD displays aren’t yet updated to the latest display connectivity standards (VESA Display ID v1.3 came out only a month ago) and support either Ultra HD resolutions at less than 30Hz or need to be configured as dual tiled displays of 2K x 2K resolution at 60Hz. While the former is fine for viewing movies, it’s not ideal for fast paced activity like gaming and thus requires the increased refresh rate. There will soon be newer displays that can deliver Ultra HD resolutions at 60Hz in a single stream and when they are made available, AMD mentions that is Radeon R9 290 series will be able to support it and drive high pixel rates of up to 600MHz which is required for Ultra HD resolutions with higher refresh rates.

In terms of display connectivity, you might notice from the table of specs that the new graphics card models adopt a single normal sized DisplayPort connector in favor of the previous generation’s dual mini-DisplayPorts. While it is one port less, most people don’t really require that many outputs and might in fact be more content with standard sized connectors that won’t need a converter before being able to hook up to a monitor. For those who demand more display support, the DisplayPort still supports multiple monitors via an MST (Multi-Stream Transport) Hub which the DisplayPort supports. From a GPU perspective, the new Radeon series still has 6 display controllers integrated on the die and thus a single card can handle 6 displays with the help of the MST Hub.

Not factoring DisplayPort options, the new range for Radeon R9 and R7 products are able to run 3x DVI/HMDI connections simultaneously. Previously on the Radeon HD 7000 series you could only run any two combinations of DVI/HDMI connections. This enablement is however not a GPU enhancement, but more of a board-level enhancement because the GPUs have had adequate display controllers since the earlier generations.

What about 3D gaming? Like its predecessor, 120Hz 3D gaming monitors are supported via graphics card's DisplayPort connection.

AMD TrueAudio Technology - Elevating Audio Performance

We've talked about AMD TrueAudio technology to some extent in our earlier preview article, but we reckon it could be an interesting game changer in the future that we're going to detail more about it here. In short, If AMD is going to have its way, the surround gaming headset and multi-channel PC speaker market would soon cease to exist because of its new TrueAudio technology.

Think about all the headphone ‘gaming’ class headsets you’ve come across boasting multi-drivers and/or 3D audio processing, what they do is try to simulate a spatial environment from the standard but limited audio stream. We describe it such because game developers literally have limited CPU utilization budget for audio processing – which generally comes up to be 10% of the CPU’s resources. The balance is allocated for compute, physics, the game’s A.I. and all the other aspects and overhead of running the game, including graphics of course. Fortunately for visualization needs, GPUs are getting ever more powerful with the ever-evolving API to promote new ways of programming efficiently to derive the intended game experience. Note that the graphics seen on screen is computed and drawn in real-time. Positional audio however isn’t and is based off conventional virtual surround post-processing to re-create simulated surround audio. With the limited CPU budget available and the need to cater to the common denominator to appeal to a wide audience, real-time positional spatial audio reproduction is not feasible and is also limited to just a handful or less audio streams/effects.

Enter AMD’s TrueAudio technology that takes a radical step forward to incorporate a fully programmable audio engine as part of the GPU die. The idea is to move away from simplistic audio reproduction with minimal effects and have accurate real-time positional audio rendered and process several streams and voices simultaneously to recreate a realistic gaming atmosphere. AMD likens this to how games have tremendously improved visually over time when moving from fixed function programming to programmable shaders. And as far-fetched it might it might sound, all of this experience can be delivered on just standard stereo desktop speakers and standard headphones of any class. You don’t necessarily have to invest in expensive gear.

Sounds gimmicky? We won’t fault you as we were equally skeptical - until AMD and its partners did a live demonstration of AMD TrueAudio technology in action at the presentation hall. Further to that, we personally tested it out with an upcoming game installment, Thief, now in its fourth version, with AMD TrueAudio technology. When playing the game with the TrueAudio enabled ,you don't readily get to appreciate what it has done for your gaming experience; but once you disable it, the difference in audio accuracy, clarity and realism is all too obvious. The difference is as stark as switching from mono to stereo audio as the game environment was very much alive and we could hear audio from behind our head while just donning a standard Sennhieser headset. While it is a tech demo, you'll have to realize that without AMD TrueAudio technology, the CPU will be tasked to process standard audio as most mainstream processors don't have the muscle to process high quality audio algorithms.

According to audio processing algorithm IP owners like GenAudio and McDSP, their spokespeople mentioned that it would take tremendous CPU processing throughput to accurately render positional audio in real-time with several audio effects. In fact, they sighted that it would take an 8-core CPU to handle such processing elegantly without bringing the system to its knees. Due to the immense processing power required, this is the reason why the industry has brushed it aside and focused on enhancing visual computing while relegating a measly 10% or so CPU processing cycles for standard audio processing tasks with simplified audio rendering that tries to mimic 3D audio via algorithms (such as Creative's EAX, Dolby, DTS and others), rather than real-time interactive audio effects reproduction.

So What is AMD TrueAudio Technology About?

What AMD's TrueAudio technology does is to provide the programmable processing throughput on the GPU's silicon die to offload the CPU from standard audio processing, while having game developers utilize audio middleware partners to enable AMD TrueAudio processing path to incorporate plug-ins for the required high quality audio processing algorithms. We experienced GenAudio's AstoundSurround (3D spatial audio technology) in action at AMD’s GPU14 Tech Day event and we were rather convinced of its accurate positional audio capabilities from demo clips presented.

Would we want AMD TrueAudio Technology? Most certainly. However it might take AMD more time to build a base of middleware plug-ins and games directly supporting this standard. Fortunately, it doesn't alienate anyone as it enhances audio experience for those equipped with suitable AMD graphics cards, while everyone else will hear standard audio. Also, what we heard from the game developers at the show is that incorporating AMD TrueAudio wasn't much effort at all.

Understanding What AMD TrueAudio Technology Means to Games and Developers

We had the opportunity to further speak with an AMD Fellow Engineer, Carl K.Wakeland who’s part of the company’s Multimedia Architecture Solutions Group to answer some sticky questions that might be on some of our readers’ minds:-

HWZ: What would be the impetus for game developers to try and incorporate AMD TrueAudio technology in their games/game engines?

AMD: We will make it easy for gaming developers as we’ll work directly with the middleware partners. By getting suitable middleware guys on board, the game developers needn’t put in much effort nor change the tools they use. All they would need to do then is to check if the system hardware supports AMD TrueAudio and if it does, the game will then latch on to that audio processing path and enable a whole lot of other audio effects and reverbs that would otherwise not be made available on a non-TrueAudio capable machine via the CPU processing route.

 

HWZ: How did AMD decide to implement an audio DSP in the GPU and can it co-work with the CPU to process more effects?

AMD: It’s all about improving the gaming experience. Whenever there’s any balance CPU cycle budget, the game developers usually task the game with better physics, A.I. or other aspects that don’t leave much room for the audio quotient that’s usually tackled at the tail-end of the game development pipeline. With AMD TrueAudio, there’s dedicated silicon set aside for true real-time audio processing needs with DSPs integrated in the AMD’s GPU.

The middleware can also understand the entire system resource and capabilities by talking to AMD’s drivers and issue processing tasks to both the AMD TrueAudio path and via the CPU – if required. E.g. 1 reverb effect to be processed by each path if necessary.

 

HWZ: Are there increased costs to the game developers by adopting AMD TrueAudio?

AMD: Not directly due to AMD TrueAudio. Cost of implementation in the game will vary depending on which audio effects and middlware plug-ins the game developers choose to work with. AMD also doesn’t charge any royalty for games using its audio processing path.

 

HWZ: Seeing that this is a new initiative by AMD and that it will take time to grow the base of AMD TrueAudio enabled systems, what is the key to getting game developers to support AMD TrueAudio technology?

AMD: The answer is getting more things enabled in the middleware. As new games come out and they get the latest drivers from the middlware, it will automatically get the benefits from TrueAudio. Also we’ve an ISV partnering effort that targets not only the middlware but the major game titles. We’re also on the lookout for mutual relationships by working with partners that are already close to AMD or like working with AMD that we can try to convince them in adopting this standard. At the end of the day, a lot depends on our work with the middlware partners as the more base we cover and work with, the higher the chances of newer games coming out that use some of these plug-ins and will eventually automatically support AMD TrueAudio technology.

HWZ: Will APUs in the future have support this feature?

AMD: No comments on future developments plans, but it is technically feasible. The audio experience is expected to be similar across the hardware but the silicon set aside for TrueAudio is scalable in nature and it can evolve as required. At this point of time, the feature is only available on the Radeon R9 290X and the Radeon R7 260X GPUs as the current feature rollout strategy.

 

HWZ: Is AMD TrueAudio featured on any of the upcoming next generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony?

AMD: Erm, I can’t comment on that!

 

In AMD's words, they hope TrueAudio will revolutionize gaming audio quality just as what programmable shaders have done for realistic graphics rendering quality. One last but important bit: AMD TrueAudio Technology is only supported on the Radeon R9 290X, R9 290 and R7 260X. We still can’t fathom why it’s not present in all of the new GPUs but as Wakeland commented, it’s just part of their current roll-out strategy.

Here are some upcoming games that are designed with AMD TrueAudio Technology:-

• Lichdom
• Thieft
• Sonic: All Stars Racing Transformed
• Murdered: Soul Suspect
• Star Citizen

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